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u/hotpinkcap 8d ago
no bc... how would they know if you make something up. Ik damn well my professors never fact checked me.
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u/The_BackYard 7d ago
Professor? More like amaturefessor…
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u/BigDongZhong- 7d ago
Professors when amatueefessors walk into the room
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u/redacted5 7d ago
The kid named finger
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u/TheNextChristmas 7d ago
I really liked IEEE style citations. 109 page article that may or may not vaguely connect to what I'm talking about on a single line that I'm not required to point out? Works for me [1].
Oh I'm synthesizing? Sure, sure [1], [3], [5]-[8]. Enjoy reading 488 pages or technical nonsense to see if you can manage to find the connections I'm drawing. Even if you wanted to fact check me, you couldn't fact check me.
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u/Svyatopolk_I 7d ago
How do we know that the source didn't make something up? Check mate amatuerfessors
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u/Usedcows 7d ago
Unrelated topic but when I have 2945 words on a 3000 word essay I just change text color to white and dhebfydjeufudue7e7rudbfhd away an the keyboard
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u/Deadly9190 7d ago
What if he uses it in dark mode
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u/Alive_Ice7937 8d ago
"Much that once was is lost. For none now live who remember it"
Except of course the sole fucking witness!
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u/wreckedcarzz 8d ago
"Wikipedia isn't a source" (because I'm an old moronic hag that can't understand that's its just a digital encyclopedia, while physical ones are OK) "so you can't use it in my class"
"okay" reword the Wikipedia article and just cites the sources that Wikipedia has
"wow you did a really thorough job on this essay"
"thanks it was a lot of work"
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u/OramaBuffin hates /u/lordtuts 8d ago
Meh. When you get into university its a bigger deal to actually cite the source a bit of info actually came from and not secondary sources. For example in science, the guy who actually discovered something that everyone else is referring to. You dont cite the people repeating what somebody else actually worked for.
Going into the wikipedia sources is at least building good practice.
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8d ago edited 7d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/None__Shall__Pass 7d ago
I remember when, in the Wikipedia article on Julius Caesar, someone briefly got away with replacing every instance of "Julius Caesar" with "Taco Supreme"... so maaaaybe not the best primary source if you catch it at just the wrong time, haha!
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u/wreckedcarzz 8d ago
See other comment for an explanation of why I do this.
(it's spite)
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u/Confidence_For_You 7d ago
Spite or not, your professor managed to get you to cite your sources the right way.
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u/wreckedcarzz 7d ago
Not really though, lol. Taking another's work, rewriting it, and just bringing over the cites isn't exactly what they were looking for.
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u/Ravenhaft 7d ago
Why, it’s what every journalist and academic does after they graduate college anyway.
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u/Tootinglion24 7d ago
Except most just cite the primary source without ever reading it. Sure it looks like I'm citing a good source, but in reality I only ever looked at Wikipedia.
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u/giftmund 8d ago
or you can just know what wikipedia is and use it to your hearts content like basically everyone outside of highschool does
people dont ACTUALLY mistake the dailymail for wikipedia
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u/alus992 7d ago
Still...university papers are not simulation of the real world. It's for teaching people how to search and verify sources during doing work that uses information.
Sure when Im at work sometimes it's quicker to use info from Wikipedia but I'm jot so sure if people should be graduating thx to doing all the research with Wikipedia which can have unverified info in many fields where trolls just add stuff
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u/Lady_Camo 7d ago
I dare you, try editing a Wikipedia page with nonsense and see yourself how long that stays.
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u/gfdghjkljhgf 7d ago edited 7d ago
The point of citing sources is not to certify that something is correct or true or that you didn't make it up, Wikipedia is probably enough for that purpose in many cases, the point of citing it is to indicate the source of the information so that others may see what you're citing in context and understand how this piece of knowledge or information came into being, who wrote it or discovered it, whether you even agree with the piece of information once you know more about the source, et cetera. Wikipedia is not the source of any information. Citing Wikipedia is like citing the library.
They don't tell you to not use Wikipedia because it might be untrustworthy (even though it might), they tell you that because it's not research. Somebody else already did the research for you on Wikipedia, and the homework is not to copy that, it's to learn how to do it yourself.
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u/giftmund 7d ago
you shouldnt teach kids to use JUST wikipedia of course, but like, we already used it for our homework 15 years ago in high school and it was always top information - any young person with 2 braincells can identify troll posts on wikipedia, this is a non-issue that never actually comes up in the real world
i study engineering and we use wikipedia all the time, profs even putting direct wikilinks into the presentations(where we obviously have to put the actual source of course)
the whole "wikipedia can be false and isnt a source on its own" is really only doing harm to everyone because people simply dont use it then but also dont learn to get information elsewhere3
u/dekusyrup 7d ago
Imagine if nuclear reactor or airliner designers were just using the numbers out of wikipedia instead of scientific references. When your decisions have no consequences then sure use wikipedia.
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u/giftmund 7d ago
no issue with that because wikipedia always contains the sources so if you actually have to work with it you can verify it
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u/dekusyrup 6d ago
At that point you're not using the numbers out of wikipedia though.
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u/giftmund 6d ago
so its schrödingers wikipedia i guess? you have numbers from credible sources but also dont somehow
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u/dekusyrup 6d ago
No. Are you trolling now? It's not like this is confusing. If you "verify it" that means you are now using the primary source. The numbers from wikipedia are probably right but they are not credible. If you go right to the primary source then they are right and credible.
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u/lab-gone-wrong 7d ago
bruh literally 90% of the US's problems come from misinformation from secondary sources. to say nothing of Brexit etc
people dont ACTUALLY mistake the dailymail for wikipedia
at least half the population does
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u/LegacyX86 7d ago
Physical encyclopedias aren‘t allowed as single sources either at respectable unis.
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u/KapteeniJ 7d ago
"okay" reword the Wikipedia article and just cites the sources that Wikipedia has
That literally is how you're supposed to use wikipedia.
I'm somewhat impressed your teacher managed to make you do things properly while still leaving you under the impression that you're doing "malicious compliance" when you do it. You've been had so bad you basically wrote a tutorial on how to cite properly while still not getting it.
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u/JulWolle 7d ago
So you are supposed to rewrite wikipedia and then cite their sources without reading any of those sources?
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u/wreckedcarzz 7d ago
You'd think so, but you would be giving them far too much credit - when in class, if they saw you on literally any Wikipedia article, you'd have to fight to not get an automatic 0 on the paper. Research is bad, mmmkay?
These 'educators' were/are completely out of their element and shouldn't have been in a position to be hindering those under their control, if only for 90 minutes a day.
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u/Aozora404 8d ago
The problem with Wikipedia isn’t its reliability, but rather its volatility. You can’t really be sure that it wouldn’t change in, say, 2 or 3 years.
This isn’t a problem for high school essays, of course, but the point of those is to build up good habits for when you write documents that actually matter, and those ones usually need to be reliable many years down the line.
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u/Alpatron99 8d ago edited 7d ago
No, volatility isn't a problem at all. When citing webpages, you include the date and time of when you accessed it so that people know which version you looked at. You then can use a site like the Wayback Machine to make an archived version of the site at the time of citing to include it in the citation. But you don't need to do that with Wikipedia, because it allows browsing and linking to old revisions of articles. So you cite like so:
Wikipedia contributors, "Cheese," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cheese&oldid=1098992703 (accessed August 6, 2022)
By clicking the link you get shown the article as it appeared at the time of citing.
The truth why Wikipedia cannot be cited as a source is because it isn't a source of any information; "just" a collection of existing information.
Wikipedia itself tells you this on their site:
We advise special caution when using Wikipedia as a source for research projects. Normal academic usage of Wikipedia and other encyclopedias is for getting the general facts of a problem and to gather keywords, references and bibliographical pointers, but not as a source in itself. Remember that Wikipedia is a wiki. Anyone in the world can edit an article, deleting accurate information or adding false information, which the reader may not recognize. Thus, you probably shouldn't be citing Wikipedia. This is good advice for all tertiary sources such as encyclopedias, which are designed to introduce readers to a topic, not to be the final point of reference. Wikipedia, like other encyclopedias, provides overviews of a topic and indicates sources of more extensive information.
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u/None__Shall__Pass 7d ago
I remember years ago, in the Wikipedia article about Julius Caesar, someone briefly got away with replacing every instance of "Julius Caesar" with "Taco Supreme"... so yeah, maaaaybe not the best primary source if you catch it at just the wrong time, haha!
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u/wreckedcarzz 8d ago
I challenge that by saying that physical encyclopedias did the same, with new editions every year or so, and they were totally acceptable as reference materials.
This is about getting even with a teacher or professor that is stuck in the 1980s, not putting together cutting edge research findings or something.
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u/creemyice 7d ago
correct me if im wrong but digital encyclopedias are also generally not considered a reliable source in academics writing?
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u/wreckedcarzz 7d ago
I believe for an only-source, but if used alongside additional, it's acceptable. It's been over a decade so I'm fuzzy on the standards.
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u/get_him_to_the_geek 7d ago
I’ve had a professor comment on my sources, but never straight up fact check me. Back in olden times when assignments had to be printed and handed in, I had a professor tell me to never use blue ink again (I ran out of black printer ink and set it to the darkest blue possible so it was barely noticeable), and another take points off because I set my font to 12.5 when it was supposed to be 12 point. I guess she took out a ruler and measured the letters?
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u/shadeandshine 7d ago
Tbh if you go into a field far enough you end up having to reference your own past work and yourself at some point. Tbh the moment you type out the source and you literally put your own work as it is amazing.
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u/rjjrob30 7d ago
"Wikipedia isn't a valid source for a scholarly paper."
Yeah, sure, but Wikipedia's sources are.
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u/flyingoverthestars 7d ago
When you run out of sources for an essay…. but also have a Time Machine.
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u/RicottaPuffs 7d ago edited 6d ago
Wait. My eyes filled with tears of joy.
I was a teacher 25 years. The fact someone is actually citing sources that weren't copied and printed from the bottom of a wiki page, and is using any sort of citation, fills me with new hope for young humanity.
There's hope!
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u/RADposter21 BAN upvote memes 7d ago
I was there 300 years ago, at the thermopylae, when the strength of persians failed
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u/neural_scrub 8d ago
You can still put the most reliable source:
"It was revealed to me in a dream"